Saudi Arabia and Israel, divergent allies for the Obama administration, have both expressed concerns over US diplomacy on Syria and Iran, preferring for their own reasons a more hardline approach Compromises are not always easy to make. This rule applies to US President Barack Obama's administration, which is currently engrossed with ongoing developments in the Middle East. In September, the United States concluded a deal with Russia over destroying Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons. Now it is negotiating a possible settlement with Iran over the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear programme. However, the pro-containment approach followed by Obama does not seemingly appeal to some of his regional partners — mainly Saudi Arabia and Israel — who have sought a more hardcore foreign policy. Such challenges, according to experts, pose serious questions about Washington's current capabilities to adopt balanced positions and satisfy all players, especially those who feel threatened by Damascus and Tehran. Tehran changes track Following his election in June, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani published an op-ed in The Washington Postunderlining his country's willingness to pursue a “constructive engagement” with the West on its “peaceful nuclear energy programme.” The new, non-aggressive approach of Rouhani, unlike that of predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of many steps that re-opened room for the stalled nuclear dialogue. According to a draft proposal tabled 9 November, the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany — the so-called P5+1 — want Iran to freeze for six months key parts of its nuclear programme. Iran and world powers announced modest progress, differences remaining, in nuclear talks Friday in Geneva after a political failure two weeks ago. Hasan Al-Hasan, a Bahrain-based political commentator, told Ahram Online that France has become the “Gulf and Israel's voice in the room.” “Kerry must have heard much of the same concerns being repeated by his Gulf and Israeli counterparts during his regional tour earlier this month," Al-Hasan said, hoping that the “Saudi-Israeli convergence will spill over into the Israeli-Palestinian issue." Israel and Iran latterly launched a war of words against each other. Addressing members of the Basij force at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel was “doomed to collapse," was the “rabid dog” of the Middle East, with leaders “not worthy” of being called “human.” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, in response, Khamenei's speech proves that “such an Iran must not get a nuclear weapon.” “The Iranians want, under the cover of the nuclear umbrella that they will have, to advance their terror activities, such as using a ‘dirty bomb' at various targets in the Western world,” Israel's Jerusalem Post quoted Netanyahu's defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, as saying. Gulf worries Saudi Arabia denied Monday a Sunday Times report that reveals “contingency plans” between Saudi officials and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency for a military attack against Iran via Saudi airspace, given they have little faith in the ongoing talks. Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, told Ahram Online that Saudi Arabia wants the nuclear talks and US-Iranian rapprochement to fail, in order to keep the military option “on the table.” Iran has continuously threatened to attack US military bases in the Gulf in case of a Western military operation on its territory, a situation that explains in large part Saudi concerns on the outcome of negotiations. “If Riyadh couldn't persuade Washington to attack Syria, then there is little hope of coercing the West to strike Iran,” Al-Ahmed pointed out. Obama declared in early September that he would seek Congressional approval for a military strike against Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Syria, moving US warships towards the eastern Mediterranean. It seemed a matter of time until a US attack. But out of the blue, a deal was signed following an initiative by pro-Assad Russia. Here is when tensions with allies emerged. Saudi-Israeli cooperation? One day later, US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Israel's Ben Gurion Airport for “in-depth” talks with Netanyahu over the influence of the deal on Washington's primary ally. Saudi head of intelligence and former ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al-Saud, warned of a “major shift” or “scaling back” in the relationship with the United States, CBS News website reported in October. Despite no noteworthy changes in US-Saudi interests, which include military, political and economic aspects, this statement signaled a hardly before seen situation of disagreement between the two states. The greatest indicator of Saudi anger came 18 October as the oil-rich state rejected membership of the UN Security Council a day after its election, giving a Syria-related justification for the step that captured the attention of the international community. The Saudi foreign ministry said that allowing the Syrian regime to “kill its own people with chemical weapons without imposing any deterrent sanctions is a proof of the (Security) Council's inability to carry out its duties and responsibilities.” Alireza Nader, senior policy analyst at RAND Corporation, said that Saudi Arabia and Israel could probably work on rapprochement, noting “some convergent interests” between them. “Israel has vocally opposed the first step of a comprehensive deal in Geneva and has its own suspicions on Iranian intentions. Washington and Tel Aviv have faced some tensions over the nuclear issues in recent weeks as well. So it would not be surprising to see Israel and Saudi Arabia cooperate more on Iran in the near future,” Nader argued. Nevertheless, he ruled out a Saudi or Israeli attack on Iran since both states are “still much dependent on their partnership” with the United States, which prefers a negotiated settlement on the nuclear issue rather than armed conflict. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/87246.aspx
